Now Rick Santorum Thinks COLLEGE Is A Liberal Conspiracy

Rick Santorum added a new line of attack to his culture war rhetoric this weekend, arguing that colleges and universities "indoctrinate" students into a secular worldview.

"President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob," Santorum told a crowd of about 1,000 Tea Party activists in Michigan Saturday. "There are good decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them.Oh, I understand why he wants you to go college, he wants to remake you in his image. I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his."

Attacks on "elites" have become a common trope in Santorum's remarks as the candidate attempts to thwart Mitt Romney by targeting working-class voters in Michigan and other Rust Belt states. But his claim that American universities are "indoctrination mills" designed to strip students of their faith appears to be new favorite theme for the resident culture warrior in the 2012 Republican race.

Santorum doubled down on his latest beachhead on ABC's This Week yesterday, telling George Stephanopoulos that conservative college students are "singled out" and "ridiculed" for their conservative views. To illustrate his point that "62% of kids who enter college with some sort of faith commitment leave without it." (TPM points out that these numbers are flawed.)

"Understand that we have some real problems at our college campuses with political correctness, with an ideology that is forced upon people who, you know, who may not agree with the politically correct left doctrine," Santorum said. "And o ne of the things that I've spoken out on and will continue to speak out is to make sure that conservative and more mainstream, common-sense conservative and principles that have made this country great are reflected in our college courses and with college professors. And at many, many, and I would argue most institutions in this country, that simply isn't the case."

Santorum's criticism of liberalism in higher education is nothing new, nor is he the only candidate espousing some variation of this argument. Anyone who has visited a liberal arts school recently can likely attest that college campuses can often be hostile environments for those who fall to the right on the political spectrum. (I would venture to guess that the Tea Party is not well-represented in New Haven.)

Even President Obama agrees that a four-year university might not be the right path for every high-school grad. In remarks to the National Governor's Association today, Obama clarified:

"When I speak about higher education, we are not just talking about a four-year degree," he said this morning. "We are talking about somebody going to a community college and getting trained for that manufacturing job that now is requiring someone walking through the door handling a million-dollar piece of equipment...We all want those jobs of the future...so we are going to have to make sure that they are getting the education they need."

But Obama's remarks don't address Santorum's real problem with higher education — that it is liberal indoctrination. Here, Santorum characteristically takes the Republican critique new heights. For Santorum, secular liberalism is not an unfortunate byproduct of higher education; efforts to send more kids to college are driven by the desire to force previously conservative, god-fearing children into academic dens of secular depravity and liberalism.